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In many developing countries, high rates of deforestation and biodiversity loss make conservation efforts urgent. Improving existing land-use plans can be an option for enhancing biodiversity conservation. We showcase an approach to enhancing an existing forest land-use plan using widely available data and spatial tools, focusing on Argentina's Southern Yungas ecoregion. We mapped the distribution of wilderness areas and species and habitats of conservation concern, assessed their representation in the land-use plan and quantified potential changes in habitat availability and forest connectivity. Wilderness comprised 48% of the study area, and the highest concentrations of elements of conservation concern were in the north. In the current land-use plan, wilderness areas often occur in regions where logging and grazing are allowed, and a large proportion of the forest with the highest conservation value (43%) is under some level of human influence. Furthermore, we found that deforestation being legally allowed in the land-use plan could reduce forest connectivity and habitat availability substantially. We recommend updating the current land-use plan by considering human influence and elements of conservation concern. More broadly, we demonstrate that widely available spatial datasets and straightforward approaches can improve the usefulness of existing land-use plans so that they more fully incorporate conservation goals.

This paper describes the system architecture of a newly constructed radio telescope – the Boolardy engineering test array, which is a prototype of the Australian square kilometre array pathfinder telescope. Phased array feed technology is used to form multiple simultaneous beams per antenna, providing astronomers with unprecedented survey speed. The test array described here is a six-antenna interferometer, fitted with prototype signal processing hardware capable of forming at least nine dual-polarisation beams simultaneously, allowing several square degrees to be imaged in a single pointed observation. The main purpose of the test array is to develop beamforming and wide-field calibration methods for use with the full telescope, but it will also be capable of limited early science demonstrations.

This study examined patterns in the species richness and abundance of small non-volant mammals along a tropical altitudinal gradient in north-eastern Australia. We investigated whether a mid-altitudinal peak in diversity was apparent, and if it occurred, whether it was determined by particular environmental conditions. We sampled a small-mammal assemblage at 17 sites distributed along an altitude-environmental gradient from savanna (350 m) to rain-forest vegetation (1000 m). Over four separate occasions (5100 trap-nights) we recorded 17 species of mammal with 416 captures. A positive non-linear relationship between altitude and mammal species richness and abundance was observed, peaking at the 800–900 m range. Many species were distributed across a range of altitudes, while others were strongly associated with particular habitat conditions. There was a distinct reduction in abundance and species richness at low altitudes associated with the less complex vegetation, lower productivity and possible anthropogenic effects. Key findings were: that small-mammal richness peaked towards the summit of the gradient and not at one-half the maximum altitude predicted by the mid-domain effect; contrasting conditions and greatest vegetation juxtaposition had the greatest influence on the patterns recorded; and that local idiosyncratic influences such as habitat factors, land management and historical biogeography are significant.

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